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Once you've played Planetside, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Battlefield: Vietnam, it's hard to imagine epic scale, multiplayer, team-based first-person shooters with vehicles have much left to offer. After these superlative games, maybe it's time to just go ahead and close the book. So when Novalogic politely coughs, raises a finger, and offers something called Joint Operations, the inclination is to pat the company on the head and say, "Yes, well, that's very nice, maybe we'll take a look at your little game as well."

And, perhaps this tendency to underrate Novalogic, which was often justified until the release of Black Hawk Down, is working in its favor. Because in spite of some glitches, Joint Operations is a cleverly designed and solidly executed game that does many things better than the competition. Who'd have thought Novalogic would get it all so dead-on right? This may not be the last word on multiplayer shooters, but it's clearly one of the best.

Baby, You Can Fly My Helicopter

One of the most striking things about Joint Operations is the way it carefully incorporates vehicles as a balanced element that drives the game but doesn't run away with it. The priority is still getting boots on the ground. Unlike Unreal Tournament 2004 or the Battlefield games, where the vehicles are basically coveted weapons, here they're a nexus for teamwork.

Because the maps are so large and the fighting is often concentrated in very specific areas, vehicles are an important part of getting to where the action is (this is especially true on island maps, where almost all of Joint Operations' elements fall so neatly into place). Because every passenger tends to add firepower by letting them shoot out the windows, there's an incentive to wait until people join you rather than just running off on your own. Vehicles are either frail or very slow, so they don't run roughshod over the gameplay. To counterbalance that, there are plenty of them and they respawn quickly. In the core mode, called "Advance and Secure," the farther you push a team back, the closer they're driven to the base where their vehicles are kept. It's one of Joint Operations' many subtle balancing tricks.

A view to a village.

However, most of the game's glitches seem to be related to the vehicles, which are the most ambitious addition since Black Hawk Down. Also, the vehicles' physics are really awful. For instance, you can slam cars into trees with impunity, racing over hills with abandon. There is none of the learning curve or skill that made Battlefield's helicopters so gratifying to fly. Instead, they're simply hovercars with a few clumsy helicopter-ish properties tacked on, such as the way they balloon upwards when they stop. This means the best way to land isn't to land, but to slam nose-first into the dirt like a runner diving for home plate. But at least you have to land; there are no parachutes, so you don't get any of the stupid paratrooper shenanigans that Electronic Arts refuses to fix in its Battlefield games.

You Are Here

Joint Operations' Advance and Secure is probably the best-designed team game yet. Like Planetside and Unreal Tournament 2004's "Onslaught" mode, the action is always focused between defense and attack points, so there's none of Battlefield's porous, free-ranging battlefields. There are also none of Planetside's esoteric rules, bonuses, and control issues. It's simple to see how hotly contested a given point is and where you're most needed. The excellent HUD and mini-maps let you check at a glance what your side is doing, and where they're doing it. For a game with only minimal tools for team organization at the macro level (although there are helpful aids for small squads), it's easy to track the action at a larger scale.